We Can Support Special Education Without the Department of Education

Able Americans Director Rachel Barkley was interviewed by The 19th about the Trump administration’s decision to lay off most employees within the U.S. Department of Education’s special education office:

Reducing the Department of Education has long been a stated goal for some on the right.

“Republicans generally are seeing education as mostly a state and local project, and that the increase in the federalization of education programs and dollars is not a step in the right direction,” said Rachel Barkley, director of Able Americans.

Able Americans is one of the only conservative think tank projects dedicated entirely to disability policy. It is housed within the National Center for Public Policy Research…

But Barkley said that this does not mean a lack of support among conservatives for special education services. She pointed to President Trump’s previous fiscal year 2026 discretionary budget request. While it proposes zeroing out or reducing many federal programs’ funding, that was not the case for special education funding.

“The President’s budget is a kind of ideological statement — a wish list that never gets enacted. His budget level funded IDEA, kept it at the same level, despite other programs having a 15% drop,” Barkley said. While she and some other conservatives oppose having a Department of Education, she says they do not oppose support for disabled students.

Read the entire article here.